The Little Stick Welder with Big Features.
Welcome to the Sparky Stick Welder project. It's a low cost Chinese built stick welder that's been DiY upgraded to enhance its features. The upgrade is driven by an ESP32 with 16MB FLASH. Several new features are added, including a color touch screen, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) control, DAC voice playback, and high current measuring capabilities.
- Uses low cost ($60 USD) ZX7-200 type Inverter Welding Machine.
- Color TFT Screen displays welding current, arc voltage, and menus.
- Touch Screen for selecting features. Built-in help screens display useful welding tips too.
- Programmable Pulse current mode for enhanced stick welding.
- Helmet mounted Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Button for remote Amps control.
- Audio for announcing Amps and over-temp alerts.
- Flash memory for saving power-up defaults.
- Low cost components (~$40 USD).
- Non invasive design, no permanent changes to the welder.
This project is suitable for most advanced electronic circuit builders that are familiar with high voltage safety. Step-by-step wiring instructions and "Heathkit" type pictorial wiring diagrams are not provided. But basic build information is available in the project build log (PDF file): https://github.com/thomastech/Sparky/raw/master/Sparky_Stick_Welder.pdf
An inverter welder is a potentially dangerous machine. Lethal primary voltages (>300 volts) are present inside the cabinet, even after power is turned off. The involved currents have more than enough energy to vaporize misplaced wiring (and misguided hand tools) in a dangerously hot explosive flash. Proceed at your own risk.
